I read a book a few years ago by James Herndon called The Way it’s Spozed to be. It was about his year of teaching in a ghetto school. He captures the sights and sounds of his school excellently. The thing that stood out most for me was the attitude toward the school supplies. How pencils and paper were hoarded by the school and reluctantly distributed to the students. As if the paper and pencil were somehow worth more than the students themselves.

It struck a nerve. Because that’s the way I treated the supplies. Until I read that book.

But then, I get a twinge when I come to the part in the curriculum that says, take a large piece of rubber and stretch it across an oatmeal box to make a drum. And I have neither rubber nor oatmeal box. (we shop at Sam’s club–of the huge industrial, rectangular, decidedly unmusical boxes). And then the part where it says, “if you don’t have the rubber, just use a coffee can with its plastic lid.”

Just use a coffee can. Don’t have that either. I do have a giant rusty baked bean can filled with rocks in the back yard. Does that count?

And am I depriving my child because I don’t have all the supplies for every science experiment?

I remember being hesitant to take my daughter out of school because her school had just gotten grant money to put in state of the art science equipment, and even had access to doppler radar!

But as it turned out, only a few kids got to use that equipment, and even though she had skipped Kindergarten, and was doing fourth grade work while in the third grade, we had to play catch up at home. I realized that the same place with all the equipment practiced grade inflation and really spent a lot more time chasing grant money that actually educating.

So maybe we with our fewer resources can pay more attention to our children and get them what they really need. I’m banking on that.